Wednesday, August 22, 2007

I'm in the (very enviable!) position of playing host to both a Finnish and a Swedish food blog challenge this month. Which is kind of lucky, because I'm having serious issues with getting food from the "shots on camera, recipe in head" stage to "edited pictures and post" one. Without further ado:

And so it's not all Foreign Tongues, All The Time: dear Quark readers - tell me about your experiences with mushrooms! Do you only eat the ones to be had in shops? Do chanterelle and porcini sneak in now and then? Or funnel chanterelle and horn of plenty? How about sheep polypore? (That's lampaankääpä / fårticka over here.) Enquiring minds want to know!

15 comments:

You'll be busy hosting then!You may have realised/guessed that I like my wild mushrooms. I eat many, and usually pick them myself, although I did buy spring mushrooms at the market and chantarelles occasionally. However, I can honestly say that I've never picked a harilik lambaseenik before. Something to rectify soon:) I'm also really keen to find some funnel chantarelles. I'm convinced they're somewhere here in Estonia, only looking to be discovered by us!

I posted recently about picking and preserving chanterelles. My first mushroom picking experience but it won't be my last! Don't have much competition over here. Mushroom picking is not very common in Scotland at all.

Pille, both of my family's summer places have good funnel chanterelle spots, and I just love picking them - you hunker down in the middle of the forest to pick ONE, and it's like a switch goes off in your head and they're everywhere. Very rewarding! They're a bit strong in taste for me though.

As for sheep polypore, when I started googling for the English name I realized it's pretty much popular in Finland and Sweden only. It doesn't have a strong taste, but I love how firm and, well, un-mushroom-like the texture is. Plus, it's very common, and you don't have to find many of them to make a decent meal, especially mixed with something stronger-tasting. (I love them fried up with hedghehog mushrooms, for example, or even chanterelles.) Stick to the small ones though!

Wendy, I've always been a bit curious about how little wild mushrooms are used both in Britain and in the US. (And personally, I leave the drying of shrooms to others - the stink is just too much for me!)

Growing up in Northern Michigan (which has a very similar climate to Sweden--except for the extreme darkness) we always picked morels. I'm convinced they're growing in Sweden someplace nearby me. I've figured out that true morels are called top murklor (I probably spelled that wrong), but every time I ask someone about them, I'm faced with that stare that says, "are you an alien" again. There also seems to be some confusion about murklor, which are false morels and poisonous. People seem to readily eat those here, and you can even buy them in cans in the grocery store. But, I'm interested in the top murklor variety. If anyone around Stockholm knows a spot, I have an SUV :-)

Martha, actually I don't know that I've ever seen actual morels being sold here. The false morels lose their poison if you boil them in a few rounds of water. (I'm assuming the canned variety has had this treatment.)

Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, but I am firmly convinced of this and love to learn more about the subject. If possible, acquire knowledge, would you update your blog with more information? It is very helpful to me

Archive

A Note on Measurements

If I for some reason neglect to give out measurments in both metric and imperial units, Google is your friend and will ensure that you lose all ability to calculate conversions in your head. If you had any to begin with, that is, which I certainly didn't. Just type in [amount] [original units] in [desired unit] and hit search.
Furthermore, 1 dl = 100 ml.